I will document this point, in relation to entertainment facilities, in chapter seven 66 MP Interview.

6 ' KK Inten lew.

91

Children came in all the time, lots of them, sometimes 18 children . . . I didn't mind them. They loved me. I enjoyed it and I knew where my children were.69

The large numbers of children living in the Canberra neighbourhoods at that time, a result of the Government's housing policies as well as of demographic factors, helped to consolidate this type of lifesty le.

Across the road there was a family with one child, the next one had two, the next one had three, the next one had four, the next one had four, the next three had two, two. three. . . . Children everywhere in this street. 0

Nevertheless, the effect on individual mothers of having twenty or so children in one backyard should not be underestimated. A certain amount of supervision would be required, more if there were pre-schoolers in a wading pool. Provision of play props, snacks, drinks and emergency health care (for splinters and grazed knees if nothing worse) would all have absorbed a considerable amount of time and energy. Yet in practice mothers managed to combine the demands of their children in the backy ard with their own needs for adult social contact.

If the kids would come here, I'd say [to the mothers| 'Come in for a cup of tea', and [with] all the mothers coming in for a cup of tea and all the children playing out in the backyard and the babies here, it was a playgroup but very informal, nothing form alised, ju s t a group of mothers.7 1

One mother set up, in her backyard, some:

. . . masonite on a trestle table, so wide that no child could reach the hot teapot in the middle, so people could come down for cups of tea and everyone was safe.72

69 DK Interview. 0 JB Interv iew.

‘1 KK Interv iew.

Such arrangements could never be entirely adult-centred however because, as one woman said, ’with all the children, you couldn't talk'.73 But it was an attempt to maintain some form of adult social activity.

Another point of neighbourhood adult contact occurred w hen women were hanging out the washing in the backyard. Although fencing was a standard part of the Government construction program, it was not above head height, and so did not constitute a major barrier between neighbours. And as daily routines tended to be fairly similar in a neighbourhood full of young families:

You’d hang out the washing and wave to the woman up the street who was hanging out her nappies at the same time. We had no greenery so you could see 5 or 6 houses up. 4

The time before the 'greenery' developed was stimulating in another way. One journalist described the new Canberra suburbs as

. . . rows of new houses divided by fences of palings which are still yellow and with gardens full of sand and scattered kerosene tins, for all the world like a newly- developed seaside slum.7:>

T his was just the place for a child's adventure playground, and very conducive to creativity, if allowed to remain that way. But backyards in Canberra were not encouraged to remain like a seaside slum. Since the days of the Federal Capital Commission in the 1920s the ideal of Canberra as the beautiful Garden City had been widely promulgated, and was still being recommended in the 1950s by the Senate Select Committee into the Development of Canberra.

The Senate Committee . . . trusts that in the development of the capital city, the ideal of the garden city is not itself lost sight of. It believes that Canberra should retain throughout its residential areas all the features of a garden suburb.76 3 KK Interview.

7 4

KB Interview. Also NR Interview - 'I'd be out at the clothesline hanging the clothes out and Mary'd be doing the same and I'd go [gestures sipping from a teacup)'. Fischer Mvths and Models p50 comments on the potential of garden greenery to privatise houses and impede social interaction amongst neighbours in Canberra.

93

Very early in Canberra's history a public tree planting program had been instigated to beautify the city as well as to diminish the effects of wind and. later, as a conscious attempt to hide individual ugly buildings. Nearly all the streets were lined with either native or exotic species of trees.

To residents and visitors alike, the wealth of verdure and of colour is one of the charms of Canberra, a charm enhanced by the changing of the seasons: the surges of colour as wattle, prunus and almond-trees blossom in the spring; the magnificent reds and golds of autumn. The setting, both distant and near, is a delight to the eye; and Canberra might be considered to approach the Australian ideal of a domestic urban setting. 8

There was an expectation that private householders had the capacity to reflect in their individual gardens the grandeur of the public horticultural program. To encourage this, the Department of the Interior distributed free to every occupier of a new house at least ten trees and forty shrubs. It also refrained from charging water consumption fees as an encouragement to the watering of gardens. 9 In addition, 'to assist in the establishment of lawns and gardens, a rotary hoeing service |wa|s provided . . . the charge being 15/- per hour.'80 Propaganda literature also exhorted residents to develop their gardens. In the late 1950s, one pamphlet announced:

() SSC Report 1955 para 203. See also Department of the Intenor Canberra and the ACT 1952 edn p i 8 .

77

Although Canberra's climate is not naturally conducive to arbonculture, careful expenments had been undertaken to ascertain the types of tree most suitable for the area. By 1953, more than one and a half million trees had been planted in a city area of 42 square miles, 175 trees for even person in the community. Commonwealth Jubilee Programme 1901-51; CAB51 p67; Keith 'Changing Scene1 p 13. The later use of trees to hide ugly buildings has been frequently commented on e.g Spate in White 1954 p237; Day ’Capital City' pi 15; Commonwealth Housing Commission Report on Housing in the ACT p2.